By Matt Agorist
For the last several years, the Free Thought Project has been predicting what will happen as government continued to arbitrarily fix wages across the United States. As politicians deceive their constituents into thinking financial success can come through an act of legislation, employers will find a way to offset this cost. It will either come through higher prices or, in this most recent Wendy’s case — robots.
To offset the costs of being forced to pay employees $15 an hour, Bob Wright, Wendy’s chief operating officer told investors last week Wendy’s has found a solution. In the past two years, Wright noted, Wendy’s has figured out how to eliminate 31 hours of labor per week from its restaurants and is now working to use technology, such as kiosks, to increase efficiency.
The automated kiosks serve two purposes: they give younger customers an ordering experience that they prefer, and they reduce labor costs.
“There is a huge amount of pull from (franchisees) in order to get them,” David Trimm, Wendy’s chief information officer, said last week during the company’s investors’ day.
“With the demand we are seeing … we can absolutely see our way to having 1,000 or more restaurants live with kiosks by the end of the year.”
The spike in demand stems from restaurant owners who want to maintain low prices while sustaining profitability.
According to Dispatch.com:
A typical store would get three kiosks for about $15,000. Trimm estimated the payback on those machines would be less than two years, thanks to labor savings and increased sales. Customers still could order at the counter.
Kiosks are where the industry is headed, but Wendy’s is ahead of the curve, said Darren Tristano, vice president with Technomic, a food-service research and consulting firm.
“They are looking to improve their automation and their labor costs, and this is a good way to do it,” Tristano said. “They are also trying to enhance the customer experience. Younger customers prefer to use a kiosk.”
While Wendy’s is ahead of the curve as far as outsourcing labor to robots goes, other fast food restaurants are not far behind.
Last month, the Free Thought Project reported on McDonald’s latest attempt to stave off minimum wage hikes. However, unlike Wendy’s kiosks that simply take your order, the McDonald’s machines do it all — including spitting out a piping hot, 563 calorie, Big Mac.
While automation in the labor market is inevitable as technology increases, laws that dictate minimum wages only serve to speed up this automation. Sadly, many people will read this article and immediately assume that it’s some fascist right wing rant that ignores the plight of the working class. However, that assessment couldn’t be further from the truth.
Raising the minimum wage does nothing to protect the working class. In fact, as we see with these Wendy’s robots, a mandatory minimum wage destroys the working class.
As Nobelist Milton Friedman correctly quipped, “A minimum wage law is, in reality, a law that makes it illegal for an employer to hire a person with limited skills.”
If the economic effects of a minimum wage aren’t convincing enough, perhaps consider the racist background of such laws. As Andrew Syrios points out, most Americans have no clue about the racist intentions and subsequent effects of the original minimum wage.
When Apartheid was collapsing in South Africa, the economist Walter Williams did a study of South African labor markets and found that many white unions were seeking to increase the minimum wage. He quotes one such union leader as saying “… I support the rate for the job (minimum wages) as the second best way of protecting white artisans.” By pricing out less educated black laborers with a minimum wage, white unions were able to insulate themselves from competition.
Indeed, the Davis-Bacon Act, which demands that private employers pay “prevailing wages” for any government contracts, was explicitly passed as a Jim Crow law in order to protect white jobs from cheaper black competitors. And while the minimum wage is supported with much more pleasant rhetoric these days, the effects on black employment, particularly black teenage employment, have been devastating. As Thomas Sowell observes,
Secret blueprint for surviving the economic collapse (Ad)
In 1948 … the unemployment rate among black 16-year-olds and 17-year-olds was 9.4 percent, slightly lower than that for white kids the same ages, which was 10.2 percent. Over the decades since then, we have gotten used to unemployment rates among black teenagers being over 30 percent, 40 percent or in some years even 50 percent.
It’s hard to imagine that black unemployment was actually less than that of whites. But that is the effect minimum wage laws can have.
Ending poverty and giving people additional income are praiseworthy goals, but there are no free lunches in this world. And trying to force prosperity through a minimum wage simply creates a whole host of negative and unintended consequences especially for those who are the most vulnerable.
Matt Agorist is the co-founder of TheFreeThoughtProject.com, where this article first appeared. He is an honorably discharged veteran of the USMC and former intelligence operator directly tasked by the NSA. This prior experience gives him unique insight into the world of government corruption and the American police state. Agorist has been an independent journalist for over a decade and has been featured on mainstream networks around the world. Follow @MattAgorist. and now on Steemit
If there is no out rage, from the leftist, then, this Robot thinks like them, and how this robot will fit into Tax and the IRS. It would be wonderful to replace all news anchors, by Robots?
Simple… the robots will pay no taxes, thereby reducing the federal receipts. If Wendy’s then cuts costs due to their lower costs the tax receipts will continue to fall.
Here we go… another step toward the “Universal Basic Income” which will reduce our legal statuses even more than they are reduced now which is that of slaves in bondage to uphold their debt (see Capitis Diminutio Maxima, or our names in all capital letters). Robots will be taxed and given the same rights as citizens, which will actually lower that UBI because we’ll all be on equal standing with them. These robots will receive income and pay tax, but even if the IRS takes all their money, unlike us, they won’t starve or become homeless. They also don’t require healthcare, just send them off to a mechanic every year for a tune-up and they’re good to go.
Reminder: In this UBI global system, like China, what we say and do will affect our credit hence incomes so those that comply will receive more credit (social credits because credit won’t be based on money anymore) than those who resist.
Also a reminder, their authority is ONLY over our legal fictions, and that’s why they’re mucking the genders and telling everyone they can identify as whatever they like, because as long as we identify as something fictional we remain under their jurisdiction. Their legal system doesn’t recognize living, breathing men and women, only the corporate fictions, because the law states corporations (our government) may ONLY interact with other corporations (our legal fictions).
They have authority over citizens and individuals, spouses, and children, but NOT over living, breathing men and women, husbands and wives, or sons and daughters. It’s ALL in the language, and that’s how they tricked us into their jurisdiction. If we pretend to be something we’re not (their legal name in all caps which THEY own by copyright), and comply with this fraudulent identity, they have us. If we don’t, if we learn their goatspeak, we can avoid them completely.
They know this, and that’s why they’re rushing it all now, because they know WE are learning it, too. Those in power who appear to be above the law ARE because they have probably NEVER identified as their corporate fictions, all the way back to not registering their births which is the first mechanism that enslaves us to them.
I take it you are a fiction writer.
All part of the plan to obsolete the vast majority of the human race so we can easily be exterminated by the depopulation fanatics that run the world.
What is the point of depopulation ?
You may explain it ?
.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e6ce0be5b295d906b8a25c7f0aab043fd16a50625dd91526cfb32c6ee1b3f3da.jpg
Well f*ck you Wendy you can eat your own damn square patties and try getting fat off that instead cause I’ll be eating elsewhere.
Perhaps it’s a learning process but recently I entered a McDonald’s to order a breakfast sandwich and saw the kiosks surrounded by patrons. I just turned around and walked out. If Wendy’s does this also, then I will be eating much healthier because I won’t use their fast food outlets either.
You will continue with the same habits. And you will get used to the new automation, just as you got used to your cellphone without the operator.
I would never support this place because the owners failed to support the people.
Well, they could just go out of business… and lay everyone off. I take it you are one of those people?
nope paramedic.
Has nothing to do with 15 dollar minimum wage, china is replacing people with robots too.
Ridiculous title and premise. Stop pushing this nonsense.
Bye bye Wendy’s!
Ludwig van Beethoven ?
I find it hillarious that people actually expected to make a living, support a family, and buy a home working a job that was created as a low-level entry position into the work force, and one that teenagers typically filled. Most of the jobs lost in this country over the last 40 years were lost to machinery and automation; auto manufacturing, telephone operators, typists, material processing, farming, and just about every manufacturing process still in operation. Those who didn’t see it coming got passed on by, as well they should have. Those who did see it coming acquired new skills to remain viable assets in the workforce.
For those of you still counting on low skilled labor positions to carry you through life… good luck, because the jobs are becoming fewer and fewer, automation will continue to replace low skilled needs, and the continued influx of low skilled workers into this country will only make the competition for the few jobs that remain that much tougher.